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THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 
A BOOK FOR THE SORROWFUL 



BY 

JAMES HINTON 




NEW YORK 
MITCHELL KENNERLEY 



Copyright 1914 by 
Mitchell Kennerley 



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AUG tf 191* 



JUN 18 I9I4 



"The Mystery of Pain ' was originally pub- 
lished in London in 1866. For an 
extended account of the author, see 
"Three Modern Seers" by 
Mrs. Havelock Ellis. 



PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 

LET us suppose that there existed an 
island of which the climate was so un- 
healthy that every one of its inhabitants be- 
came in his infancy affected with rheuma- 
tism, causing all motion of their limbs to be 
a source of pain. And let us suppose, also, 
that this island had been without communi- 
cation with the rest of the world, so that its 
inhabitants had never come into contact with 
any people free from their own affliction. 
They would have found walking always a 
painful thing; the thought of it would be to 
them a thought of pain; and since we call 
things that are always painful evil, they 
would call walking an evil. But in this their 
thought would be false. They would be feel- 
ing a good thing painful because their life 
was marred, and calling it evil only because 
they did not understand their own condition. 
And if it could be explained to them that the 
cause of their pain was not anything bad in 

5 



6 PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 

walking, but only their own disease, that 
itself would be a gain to them. Even if the 
conditions of their life could not be changed, 
it would still be a benefit to them to know 
the true source of their evil plight, and 
learn in what direction they must look for 
real relief. Besides, how many strange and 
mysterious things in their life it would make 
clear, to know that this walking, which they 
dreaded, and called bad, was a natural de- 
light and good of man : what vain endeavors 
it would save them from; what higher ap- 
prehension of possible delight in life, even 
for them, it would afford. 

Now this is like the idea I have tried to 
explain in this little book; namely, that 
things which we have inevitably called evil 
ma y yet be truly good. My thought was 
that all which we feel as painful is really 
giving — something that our fellows are bet- 
ter for, even though we cannot trace it ; and 
that giving is not an evil thing, but good, a 
natural delight and good of man, and that 
we feel it painful because our life is marred. 

So far my thought now is the same as 
when I wrote the book, but I have come to 



PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 7 

see that it was incomplete. I was thinking 
of painful things, and took no account of 
pleasurable ones. What I said in it was this : 
when a painful thing comes to us, let us 
think, not of how it affects ourselves, but 
of how it affects others. Now I would add: 
when a pleasant thing comes to us, let us 
think, not of how it affects ourselves, but of 
how it affects others. This is but making 
our regard true to the facts around us, but 
it would bring with it results of the great- 
est consequence; for the very nature of the 
duties which lie upon us — our very right and 
wrong — depends upon the question whether 
it is a thought of ourselves or of others that 
moves us. When a man begins to seek good- 
ness, then the effect of having his thought 
fixed upon self is seen: it falsifies the very 
nature of right, perverting it from being 
the simple following of service into a ques- 
tion of restraining ourselves from pleasure. 
So that any being who has succumbed to let- 
ting self stand first to him has brought on 
himself a bondage which he does not sus- 
pect, a need for banishing pleasure which 
God lays on none of his creatures. And 



8 PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 

therefore there is a deliverance also possible 
for us from evils which seem hopeless, be- 
cause it may come in a way we have not 
thought of namely, from the perception 
that, by submitting to a false feeling, we 
have made our thought of duty also false. 
To let regard to ourselves be first is to de- 
form our right ; to change it from being what 
it simply is — our fellows' good — into a false 
thing, our own restraint from pleasure. 
And wheresoever this is, there stands a de- 
liverance ready, an entrance, by the door of 
a truer feeling, into a truer law. And this 
also is what Christ has shown us. 



The Mystery of Pain 



CHAPTER I 

THIS book is addressed to the sorrow- 
ful. It may be there are some in 
whose lives pleasure so far overbalances pain 
that the presence of the latter has never been 
felt by them as a mystery. It is probable 
that there are more who, through native 
strength of mind, or felicity of circum- 
stance, are able to meet the questions that 
arise out of it with unoppressed hearts, and 
who have so strong a faith in good that they 
can, without difficulty, resolve all forms of 
evil into it. To these I do not address my- 
self ; but there is another, and, I think, a 
more numerous class, to whom their own or 
others' pain is a daily burden, upon whose 
hearts it weighs with an intolerable anguish. 
I seek to speak to these; not as a teacher, 
but as a fellow. Sharing their feeling, and 

9 



10 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

knowing well how vain is the attempt to 
throw off misery, or to persuade ourselves 
that life is better than it is, I would fain 
share with them also some thoughts that have 
seemed to me capable of casting a bright 
gleam of light athwart the darkness, and, 
if they are true, of bringing an immense, an 
incredible joy out of the very bosom of dis- 
tress. 

It seems to me, indeed, that nothing less 
than this will suffice ; that pain must furnish 
its own consolation, if it is to be consoled at 
all; or rather that it must give more than 
consolation — that it must give joy. If it 
can be made fruitful thus, if a rejoicing can 
be seen to be rooted in sorrow, not some- 
times only, but absolutely, then at least one 
part of the mystery, and perhaps the hard- 
est and the darkest part, would be gone. 
And this it is that I think I have seen, and 
that I wish, if I can be so happy, to show 
to those who need it more than myself, and 
who better than myself may profit by it. 

Let me beg the patience of one class of 
sufferers, and their forbearance even, with 
some of the thoughts which are herein ad- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 11 

dressed to another. No one, I think, can 
have had much intercourse with those who 
have been called upon to suffer, without feel- 
ing that there are two different ways in 
which their pains most heavily assault them. 
There are some in whom the fact that they 
and others are called on for endurance — 
even the endurance of unutterable pains — 
rouses no angry questionings, and excites 
no doubts. Their hearts may be bowed down 
to the earth, but they do not murmur; they 
think it natural that the ways of God should 
be beyond mortal fathoming, and that what 
would seem best to our narrow vision could 
not be the truly good ; in their deepest 
agony, they do not question righteousness. 
But there are others — I think they are the 
more — the chief poignancy of whose suffer- 
ings comes from an irrepressible doubt of 
right, a burning passion to penetrate the im- 
penetrable meaning of their anguish. They 
might gird themselves up to endure, but they 
cannot tolerate the unreason, the waste, the 
seeming wrong. Their souls, which might 
stand erect before the utterest tortures which 
right could demand, or reason could inflict, 



12 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

writhe in impotent passion in face of that 
cold, unanswering law which will spare 
nothing, or that cruel caprice which lays its 
sacrilegious choice upon the best. What they 
demand is to see a right and purpose in the 
loss and wrong. 

It is a human cry, which surely God does 
not despise. Is it not, indeed, a faith igno- 
rant of itself? — an assurance that there must 
be in God's world a right, a perfect reason, 
which would not balk our hearts or mock our 
hopes if we could know it? Surely we ought 
not to be impatient of these demands, even 
when they are most impatiently urged. 
Those who do not feel them, or who have 
succeeded in hushing them within their own 
bosoms, may permit them to be weighed and 
pondered to the full for others' sakes. Per- 
haps, too, it may be found that these passion- 
ate questionings do not lead us altogether 
wrong; that God's own Spirit may be 
prompting them, designing to meet them 
with an answer; that they may be, though 
a faulty, yet an acceptable, fulfilling of the 
precept: "For this thing will I be inquired 
of, saith the Lord." Do not our Savior's 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 13 

words encourage us to seek knowledge as 
well as other gifts, when He says, "I call 
you not servants, but I have called you 
friends, for all things that I have heard of 
my Father I have made known unto you." 

If we knew all things that the Father 
does, would our hearts be consoled? would 
our sorrows be turned into joy? Does not 
the secret anticipation of the heart, in an- 
swer to this question, mark the distinction of 
the believer and the faithless? I believe 
that by such knowledge sorrow would be 
turned into joy; I think it may even be seen 
that it would ; that we may have a knowledge ; 
now that proves it. Accustomed as we have 
been to be in darkness, and to bear sorrow 
unassuaged (debarred by loss and lapse 
from our privilege as Christian men), have 
we not almost forgotten that the Spirit is 
the Comforter; that the gospel claims, as 
one of its chief ends, that we might have 
great consolation; that God has undertaken 
Himself to wipe away all tears from His 
children's eyes; and that Christ, foretelling 
tribulation, has bidden us be of good cheer? 

Let us recall the joyful words; let us as- 



14 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

sure ourselves that they do verily express the 
truth; let us be bold to believe them, and, 
believing them, to look for and to welcome 
all agencies by which they are fulfilled. 
From whatever unexpected quarters, or 
quarters most threatening and hostile, there 
springs up consolation, may we not believ- 
ingly recognize it as God's messenger, as 
His minister for fulfilling His word? Him- 
self not unwilling to do the consoler's part 
— nay, rejoicing most therein — shall we 
wonder that He bends all things to the same 
end, makes all results of human effort, all 
the long tale of human strife, His minis- 
ters, to do for Him His best and dearest 
work; to give us joy, such joy as His; to 
transmute our life, and make its dark 
threads translucent with the splendor of a 
glory like His own? 

Can we wonder if all that man has known 
or done has been working together, un- 
known to him, indeed, but guided by God's 
hand, to this end : coming to us now as His 
ministers in our sore need, and bringing re- 
freshing waters to us when we are thirsting 
unto death? For surely never was the heal- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 15 

ing water needed more than now. Man has 
learned many things, but he has not learned 
how to avoid sorrow. Among his achieve- 
ments the safeguard against wretchedness is 
wanting. Perhaps, indeed, he could scarcely 
be charged with exaggeration who should 
hold that the aggregate of man's unhappi- 
ness had increased with his increasing cul- 
ture, and that the acuter sensibility and mul- 
tiplied sources of distress more than 
outweigh the larger area from which his 
pleasures are drawn, and the more numer- 
ous means of alleviation at his command. At 
least, it appears certain that the heaping up 
of enjoyments, if ever it was designed as a 
means of producing happiness, has proved a 
signal failure. When we regard the general 
tone of feeling of our age, whether as ex- 
pressed in its literature, in its social inter- 
course, or even more, perhaps, in its amuse- 
ments, do we not find ourselves in presence 
of a society from which real gladness has 
well-nigh died out, in which hope is almost 
extinct? I seem to be reminded of the at- 
tempt so often made, and proved fruitless 
just as often, by external pleasures and mul- 



16 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

tiplied distractions to beguile, or at least to 
quiet, a wounded heart. Man's heart is 
wounded in these latter days; the bright 
dreams of his youth have vanished ; the out- 
pouring of his deepest passion recoils on 
himself in mockery; but he can attire him- 
self in gorgeous apparel, and fare sumptu- 
ously every day. He can lay all lands under 
contribution, and make Nature serve his 
pleasures ; he can even explore all knowledge 
— if he will abstain from asking any ques- 
tion that it truly concerns his manhood to 
have answered. But surely it is not now an 
open question whether pampered luxury or 
gratified curiosity can heal a wounded spirit. 
If happiness is to revisit the earth, or, if it 
has ever been a stranger there, is to be 
strange no longer, it must come in the form 
of a genuine joy of heart, a satisfaction of 
our highest nature. It must come surround- 
ed with light, and bring hope in its train; it 
must bid our largest and noblest affections 
spring up and blossom anew. It must visit 
us as spring visits the frozen lands, and 
make our life-blood flow again with a warm 
current in our veins. 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 17 

And there are thoughts which would do 
this ; thoughts which are possible to us now : 
in some sense, indeed, now first possible to 
us, though open to all men since Christ and 
His apostles preached. Old thoughts, and 
yet new; as old as the gospel, yet taught us 
with fresh evidence and proof by the last 
discoveries of science, which do but gather 
up the testimony of Nature to that good 
news, and bid us seek beyond the visible the 
secret of our life. 

It is true, indeed, that no change in our 
thoughts can alter the nature of things, or 
invert the essential relations of pleasure and 
pain. No form of opinion can make bitter 
sweet, or cause the couch of suffering to be 
a grateful rest. Yet let us observe what is 
true, on the other hand. It is in the power 
of knowledge very radically to determine 
our feelings, and sometimes to make the 
same things in a high degree pleasurable, 
or the reverse. Take, for example, the case 
of hypocritical pretence of friendship, and 
designing arts to procure our favor. Igno- 
rant of their nature, these pretensions (if 
not too gross) might be sources of gratifi- 



18 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

cation to us ; but the discovery of their true 
character makes them in the highest degree 
repulsive, nothing being altered but our 
knowledge. A similar effect may be pro- 
duced in the opposite direction: the appar- 
ent aversion or coldness of a beloved per- 
son may be turned into a source of joy, if 
it be discovered to depend upon a real re- 
gard. 

It is in the power, therefore, of the dis- 
covery of an unknown or unregarded fact 
to alter our feelings — even to invert their 
natural character; to make unpleasing that 
which is naturally pleasant, or to render in 
the highest measure joyful that which is nat- 
urally repugnant. This power is in knowl- 
edge where there has been ignorance. It 
does not alter our natural emotions: it still 
leaves (as in the cases supposed) the mani- 
festations of regard agreeable in themselves, 
and the tokens of aversion in themselves the 
source of pain; but it can overrule these pri- 
mary tendencies, eliciting feelings which are 
stronger within us than the sensational im- 
pressions. We may take another simple 
case: The loss of a small sum of money is 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 19 

a naturally painful thing ; few persons could 
avoid a distinct emotion of annoyance from 
its occurrence. But let a generous man dis- f' 
cover that through that loss a dear friend 
has been largely benefited, and his feeling 
is entirely changed; the vexation is lost in 
a stronger pleasure. 

It is therefore evident that knowledge 
might alter our whole feeling with respect 
to the world. The apparent good and evil 
of life constitute a case in which a truer un- 
derstanding might invert the natural impres- 
sion. We need not, therefore, be hopeless 
in presence of the problem of pain. Knowl- * 
edge might alter its entire aspect. Nay, we 
are not limited to this general thought. For 
there is one condition under which all know 
that pain is not truly an evil, but a good. 
This is when pain is willingly borne for an-^ 
other's sake. Its entire character is altered 
then. It not only passes into the category 
of good things, but it becomes emphatically- 
the good. Our life has nothing else so ex- 
cellent to show. All kinds of pleasure fall 
infinitely below it. Measured by self-sac- 
rifice, by heroism, every other good sinks not 



20 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

only into a lower place, but becomes evident- 
ly of a lower kind. Nothing else in the same 
full and perfect sense deserves or receives 
the name of good. The homage of all hearts 
unequivocally affirms this title. Even when 
there is not manhood enough to imitate, 
when the baser nature within us prefers the 
meaner course, the verdict of the soul is 
never doubtful. The pains of martyrs, or 
the losses of self-sacrificing devotion, are 
never classed among the evil things of the 
world. They are its bright places rather, the 
culminating points at which humanity has 
displayed its true glory, and reached its per- 
fect level. An irrepressible pride and glad- 
ness are the feelings they elicit: a pride 
which no regret can drown, a gladness no 
indignation overpower. Conceive all mar- 
tyrdoms blotted out from the world's his- 
tory; how blank and barren were the page! 
There are the materials, then, evidently 
within us for an entire inversion of our at- 
titude toward pain. The world in this re- 
spect, we might almost feel, seems to trem- 
ble in the balance. A touch might trans- 
form it wholly. One flash of light from the 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 21 

Unseen, one word spoken by God, might 
suffice to make the dark places bright, and 
wrap the sorrow-stricken heart of man in 
the wonder of an unutterable glory. 

If all pain might be seen in the light of 
martyrdom; if the least and lowest in man's 
poor and puny life — or shall we rather say, 
in God's great universe — might be inter- 
preted by its best and highest, were not the 
work done? It is done: for the light has 
shone, the word is spoken. 



CHAPTER II 

A BRIEF narrative of my thoughts 
may be allowed me, as the simplest 
method I can adopt of giving them expres- 
sion. Some time ago, two feelings were for- 
cibly impressed upon my mind. On the 
one hand, I was made conscious afresh of 
the evil that is in man's present state ; an evil 
deeply affecting his whole being, and de- 
manding for its remedy nothing less than a 
reconstruction and restoration of his nature. 

And, on the other hand, I wasjscaxcely less 
impressed with the evidence that there ex- 
ists in all human experience something un- 
seen, some fact beyond our consciousness, 
so that the seeming of our life is not 
the truth of it. 

Neither of these thoughts is new. They 
came with new force to my mind owing to 
particular lines of thought on which I was 
engaged, which presented them to me in 

22 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 23 

fresh lights, and with new evidence, making 
old words burn with a new lustre; but they 
are in themselves familiar truths. The rad- 
ical need of a change in human nature has 
been affirmed by the best members of the 
human race, as long as history records the 
thoughts of men: with us it has become 
mixed up with theologic doctrines, and so 
has been made the subject of verbal dis- 
putes ; but it is itself an old and native feel- 
ing of the human heart. 

And the belief that there is an unseen fact 
beneath all that we are conscious of — that 
there is something unperceived by us which 
gives rise to all our experience — also is not 
new; though it has lately taken a more dis- 
tinct form and place in the human mind. 

They are two old and customary 
thoughts ; but the freshness with which they 
appeared to me enabled me to see in them 
a relation which I had not perceived before. 
That which suggested itself to me was this : 
If man's nature needs a change, and there 
is some fact we are not conscious of causing 
our experience, then may not this fact be the 
working of that very change in man? 



24 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

This thought assumed by degrees in my 
mind the character of an assured and mani- 
fest truth. It is the starting point from 
which the thoughts contained in this volume 
sprang: — 

Our experience is the working out of a 
change in man; or, to speak in clearer and 
more familiar terms, it is the carrying out of 
man's redemption. 

It is clear that if this thought could be 
accepted as the truth, it would fulfil the con- 
ditions for a complete change in our thought 
of life. To connect all our experience with 
such an end would enable us to read it en- 
tirely anew. For by giving to our pains 
a place of use and of necessity, not cen- 
tred on ourselves, but extending to others, 
and indeed affecting others chiefly, as ex- 
isting for, and essential to, God's great work 
in the world; — by giving to our painful ex- 
perience this place, its whole aspect would 
be altered. It would come within the sphere 
of that pain which is capable of being the 
instrument of joy; which exhibits the high- 
est good we can in our present state attain, 
■ — the pain, that is, of martyrdom and sac- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 25 

rifice. Nor are we left, indeed, to rest mere- 
ly in this general thought: it comes to us 
realized in the highest form, and raises our 
souls to a height which might seem too aw- 
ful and too full of joy. For so regarded, 
all our pains — all human pain and loss — 
identify themselves, in meaning and in end, 
with the sufferings of Christ. He stands as 
the Revealer to us of Human Life; and the 
emotions which His story awakens within 
us become the pattern of those with which 
all distress may be encountered and every 
loss accepted. 

And surely we may at least say this: If 
God would give us the best and greatest 
gift, that which above all others we might 
long for and aspire after, even though in 
despair, it is this that He must give us, the 
privilege He gave His Son, to be used and 
sacrificed for the best and greatest end. 
Nothing else could so fill our nature or sat- 
isfy our hearts as this ; that Christ's own life 
should be renewed, His work fulfilled in us ; 
that we should be united with Him so^ and 
feel the wonderful words of St. Paul true 
of our own poor and blank-seeming sorrows : 



26 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

"I fill up that which is behind of the afflic- 
tions of Christ, for His body's sake, which 
is the Church": our sufferings being related 
to an end that is not merely ours; an end 
that is of all ends the greatest and the best. 

For we are so made as to rejoice in others' 
good, to find in it, indeed, our highest joy, 
to rejoice, above all, in serving it. And if 
this thought of human life is true, we see 
that the gospel addresses man as constituted 
thus. Surely it should do so. If it came to 
us on any other ground it would be ad- 
dressing itself not only to lower but to 
weaker elements within us. It would pass 
by the worthiest part of us, the part most 
kindred to itself. For with what light does 
the gospel come, what revelation does it 
make, but this, that God's highest joy is in 
others' good? nay, that His great heart is im- 
patient of their misery, and springs forward 
with an eager haste to take it on Himself, 
finding therein alone the means to make us 
know Him. 

When we look there, we can see why God 
is the blest, the happy Being. We should 
be happy if we had love, and found for it 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 27 

such a work; if we might take the human 
sorrow, and bear it on our hearts, and give 
our lives, too, and our sorrows for the re- 
demption of the world. If we might un- 
dertake that work, a small, the smallest part 
of it, and live for that and die for it, that 
would be God's greatest gift to us. 

His best gift, then, would be, not in our 
pleasures but in our sorrows; in our losses 
and evils, not in our possessions or delights. 
If this one fact of the use of our lives by 
God in the redemption of the world were 
true, the very foundations of our life would 
be changed, the current of our thought and 
feeling must pour itself through a new chan- 
nel. 

The view, then, that I desire to suggest 
rests upon these two thoughts : that there Jusu— 
somethings accomplished in our experience 
which is unseen by us ; and that sacrifice for 
others is a good. For this unseen work that 
is done througE us is something done for 
others. 

With this view I think we shall find here- 
after that both the facts of life and the con- 
stitution of our own nature so evidently 



28 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

agree as to give it the greatest possible con- 
firmation. But I may first say a few words 
respecting the demand which is thus made 
upon us to recognize the existence of an un- 
seen fact in all that we experience. 

It is evident that all the effects of the 
events with which we are concerned are not, 
and could not possibly be, perceived by us. 
We see and feel things — alike the great 
ones and the small ones, as we esteem them — 
only as they affect our senses; that is, only 
in small part and for a short time. They 
soon pass beyond our sight, and while they 
are within it they never show us all they are, 
often those which are the greatest seeming 
to us the least. How little we are able, often, 
to calculate the influence even upon our own 
future of events or actions of which we 
seem to have the most perfect knowledge at 
the time. And of the effects of these events 
on others, which must go on, so far as we 
can estimate, without any end, only the 
smallest fragment is within our view. It is 
one of the first lessons taught men by ex- 
perience, not to judge of events by what 
they seem, alone, but to remember that there 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 29 

may be much more involved in them than ap- 
pears. To judge of our life, therefore, 
merely by that which is seen of it, is to com- 
mit ourselves to certain error. 

So that the thought I have suggested, that 
in all our experience there is some unseen 
relation to spiritual things — to a spiritual 
work in man — makes on us no new demand. 
It is but the carrying out to their legitimate, 
and surely to their natural result, princi- 
ples which experience has established. We 
shall be sure to be thinking and feeling 
falsely respecting our life, if we cannot 
recognize some unseen bearing of it. For 
we do not, we know we cannot, see the whole. 

And this principle is established not only 
by experience ; it is the lesson which, almost 
more than any other, science teaches us also. 
In exploring the material world, we soon 
find that, in order to understand any part of 
it aright, we must recognize things which 
are unseen, and have regard to conditions or 
to actions which do not come within our di- 
rect perception. It is enough to instance the 
pressure of the air, of which we have no con- 
sciousness, the motion of the earth, equally 



30 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

unperceivable by us ; the hidden force, lurk- 
ing in unseen atoms, of chemical affinity, or 
electricity: the vibrations which traverse the 
universal ether; and, in fine, that invisible 
unity which makes all her forces one, where- 
by (holding to the unseen) man has traced 
out in nature a perfect order amid all con- 
fusion. 

So far we have learnt that what we di- 
rectly and naturally perceive in the things 
around us, and the events which happen to 
us, was never meant to be the guide to our 
thoughts respecting them. A chief part of 
the value of science, indeed, consists in 
bringing into our knowledge, and so into our 
practical use, that which is not within our 
consciousness, and which our senses can only 
indirectly, or even not at all, perceive. Sci- 
entific knowledge consists in regarding the 
unseen ; in looking at things which are in one 
sense invisible. It is therefore true, because 
it fulfils this evident condition for the attain- 
ment of the truth. 

And thus, when it is said that all human 
experience is the working out of the redemp- 
tion of the world, the restoration and per- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 31 

fecting of man's being, it is no difficulty in 
the way," or evidence to the contrary, that it 
is not visibly so. If this seem like a diffi- 
culty, it arises only from our natural ten- 
dency to limit our thoughts by our impres- 
sions, and so to condemn ourselves to error. 
That is the one source of error from which 
all advance in knowledge sets us free; it is 
the one difficulty which obstructs the road to 
truth. Reference is made to an unseen fact. 
It should be so. If the fact were not unseen 
it could not be the truth ; for it would not be 
freed from the limitations of our perception. 
This does but bring the thought into har- 
mony with all our thoughts that we have just 
ground for believing true. And if a certain 
eff ort is demanded to free ourselves from 
the dominion of our own too small impres- 
sions, it is but the same effort which is, or 
has been, the condition of all knowledge. 
But here the effort is not intellectual. We 
are not called upon by great stretch of 
thought to see relations in ordinary facts 
which no common eye can see. We are not 
bidden to follow causes to far distant and 
remote effects. The demand is not for a 




32 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

arger intellectual view, but for faith; for 
that which is the common and inevitable 
basis of all religion, and is the foundation 
stone of Christianity. We have to recog- 
nize a fact no human eye, indeed, can fully 
trace, but which God reveals. 



CHAPTER III 

A CONSIDERATION of the uses 
that pain visibly serves in human life 
may add weight to the thoughts that have 
been suggested. For these uses, which have 
been often dwelt upon, are by far too lim- 
ited, even if they were otherwise adapted, 
to give the key to its existence. Three uses 
of pain are recognized, and, indeed, cannot 
be overlooked: — 

1. Bodily pain prompts us to many ac- 
tions which are necessary for the main- 
tenance or security of life, and warns us 
against things that are hurtful. It has been 
often pointed out how largely that which 
contributes to health is attended with pleas- 
ure, and how constantly the access or the 
causes of disease are accompanied by pain. 
Cold and hunger, for example, lead us to 
feed and clothe ourselves, and when excess 
begins, there come satiety and disgust. 

33 



34 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

These things are true, but they exhibit 
only one side of the facts. If pain is in these 
respects often beneficial, it is also often 
harmful ; and in almost all cases it is liable to 
exceed, in an immense degree, the amount 
which is needful to secure its beneficial in- 
fluence. The pain of many diseases, by the 
exhaustion it produces, is one of the chief 
sources of their danger; while in many cases, 
as in the abuse of intoxicating drinks, it 
wholly fails to indicate the most fatal perils. 

And not only is life, in many cases, crowd- 
ed with useless or excessive pains, but our 
sensibility itself seems to be more developed 
for pain than for pleasure. Is not our 
power of suffering in excess of our power 
of enjoying? Intense enjoyment can last 
but for a short time, and when once the limit 
of fatigue is reached, the pleasure itself may 
become a source of torture; but pain may 
continue undiminished, even growing in se- 
verity, until life itself succumbs. 

Indeed, if we bring ourselves resolutely to 
look at all the facts, are we not almost com- 
pelled to feel that our nature— at least our 
bodily nature — is constituted rather for pain 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 35 

than for pleasure? It is to the former that 
it vibrates, if not most readily, at least most 
intensely and most protractedly. Nor can 
we overlook here that strange law of our 
constitution by which a comparatively slight 
pain will spoil much happiness, and even 
turn what should be pleasure into bitterness. 

There is no adequate explanation, there- 
fore, to be found of pain in the beneficial 
effects which it produces in respect to our 
physical existence. It serves these uses — is 
benevolently meant to serve them, doubtless, 
as our hearts irrepressibly affirm — but it ex- 
ists independently of them. Its source lies 
deeper, and its ends are larger. 

2. But, secondly, pain serves as a punish- 
ment for sin; it follows wrongdoing, in the 
forms of bodily disease or want, of mental 
anguish, or social vengeance. Suffering is 
the minister of justice. This is true in part, 
yet it also is inadequate to explain the facts. 
Of all the sorrow which befalls humanity, 
how small a part falls upon the specially 
guilty; how much seems rather to seek out 
the good! Nights spent in dissipation bring 
ruined health; nights spent in fond watch- 



36 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

ings by beds of pain bring a like and equal 
ruin. To what sufferings children are sub- 
ject, and indeed all who are not able to pro- 
tect themselves! We might almost ask 
whether it is not weakness rather than wrong 
that is punished in this world? 

Nor is there a wider basis for the idea that 
physical pain punishes the violation, not of 
moral, but of physical law. Not to speak 
of the cruelty which thus inflicts the last 
punishment upon the ignorant, and treats 
misfortune as a crime, the relation is itself 
as partial as the others. No violated physi- 
cal law can be shown in destruction by storm 
or earthquake, or in the poverty which 
presses upon the weaker members of a thick- 
ly peopled country. Pain avenges the ma- 
jesty of violated law, physical and moral, 
but it does not exist for this. 

3. But there is another end which pain 
fulfils, a worthier and more satisfying one, 
perhaps, than either of those that have been 
mentioned. It disciplines and corrects the 
erring, chastens and subdues the proud, 
weans from false pleasures, teaches true wis- 
dom. 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 37 

Happily it does; but only in some cases. 
Unhappily it more often fails to teach or to 
subdue* Often it hardens or perverts. Pain 
is used for a discipline, but can we say that 
it exists solely for that end when those to 
whom it is no blessing, but a curse, whom it 
rouses only to bitterness, or sinks merely into 
despair, have no exemption, and seem to 
plead in vain for pity? Most often in this 
sad world pain works, to our eyes, evil, and 
not good; and where it works no good, it 
often falls most heavily. Some other source 
and reason must be found for pain than the 
moral benefit it visibly brings the sufferer. 

And if neither of the uses we have thus 
observed in pain can even seem to furnish 
the reason for its existence, so neither can 
they when taken altogether. There are pains 
innumerable which benefit neither the body 
nor the soul; which punish no moral wrong, 
which vindicate no material law against vol- 
untary breach. Take, for one instance, the 
sufferings of industry condemned to reluc- 
tant idleness, which lead so often to discon- 
tent and bitterness of heart. 

All these we have enumerated are sec- 



38 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

ondary purposes served by pain. They do 
not conduct us to its source, nor reveal to us 
its meaning. Neither does the fact that the 
progress of man and the development of his 
powers are prompted and maintained by the 
discomforts and evils which he feels. For 
pain often paralyzes instead of stimulating, 
and reduces to impotence energies of the ut- 
most value. 

We must, therefore, accept pain as a fact 
existing by a deep necessity, having its root 
inthe essential order of the world. If we 
are to understand it, we must learn to look 
on it with different eyes. And does not a 
different thought suggest itself even while 
we recognize that the others fail? For if 
the reason and the end of pain lie beyond 
the results that have been mentioned, then 
they lie beyond the individual. Pain, if it 
exist for any purpose, and have any end 
or use — and of this what sufferer can en- 
dure to doubt? — must have some purpose 
which extends beyond the interests of the 
person who is called upon to bear it. For 
the ends which have been mentioned include 
all that concerns the individual himself. 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 39 

That which surpasses these rises into a 
larger than the individual sphere. From this 
ground it becomes evident again that, to 
know the secret of our pains, we must look 
beyond ourselves. 

These uses of pain, which concern the one 
who suffers only, must fail and be found in- 
sufficient; they ought not to be enough, for 
they do not embrace that which is unseen. 
Confining ourselves to that which is visible to 
us, we ought to find ourselves in darkness, 
unable to answer irrepressible questions. 
But when we extend our thought, and recog- 
nize not only that there are, in pain, ends un- 
seen by us, but that these ends may not be 
confined within the circle of our own inter- 
ests, surely a light begins to glimmer 
through the darkness. While we look only at 
that which directly concerns the individual 
who suffers, no real explanation of suffer- 
ing, no satisfaction that truly satisfies, can 
be found. But if we may look beyond, and 
see in our own sufferings, and in the suffer- 
ings of all, something in which mankind also 
has a stake, then they are brought into a re- 
gion in which the heart can deal with them 



40 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

and find them good. And if the heart, the 
reason also. For here it is the soul that is 
the judge; and, if the heart is satisfied, the 
reason also is content. 



CHAPTER IV 

WE have noticed before how love is ca- 
pable in some degree of overruling 
our natural feelings of pain, and of making 
some things, that otherwise would be pain- 
ful, a source of joy to ourselves, if they are 
productive of benefit to others whom we de- 
light to serve. When we look into this sub- 
ject farther, we see that it is a law of our 
experience that our own mental condition 
controls and even alters our feelings. 
Though we speak of pleasure and pain as 
fixed and definite things, yet they are truly 
by no means fixed. It is matter of familiar 
experience that various circumstances may 
modify our sensibility in respect to things 
which are, in our ordinary state, painful. 
The power of mental excitement in this re- 
spect is well known. A soldier wounded dur- 
ing battle may feel no immediate suffering 
from the severest injury; and we have every- 
day proof of the same thing in the failure of 

41 



42 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

slight accidents to pain us when we are in- 
tently occupied. All strong emotions, in- 
deed, seem to have a similar power. It can 
scarcely be doubted that martyrs have some- 
times gone through their flaming death in 
ecstasy. And the accounts we have of that 
fanatical sect in the East, one part of whose 
devotions consists in working themselves 
first into a frenzy, and then laying hold on 
glowing iron, dancing with it in their hands, 
and putting it to their lips, indicate not only 
an absence of pain in the act, but even some 
kind of pleasure. 

It would seem, indeed, that there is noth- 
ing that can be said to be always or neces- 
sarily a cause of pain. What we can truly 
say on this point is, that there are certain 
things which are painful to our bodily senses 
when these are not controlled or modified by 
the state of the mind. It is as truly our na- 
ture not to feel pain from the ordinarily 
painful things at some times, as it is to feel 
them painful at others. In this respect, the 
power of love to take away pain is not pe- 
culiar. Love, when it is strong, can banish 
pain ; but in this it is only like all strong emo- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 43 

tions: it is peculiar in its power of making 
what is ordinarily painful a source of joy, 
and this a joy of the highest and most ex- 
quisite kind. We all know this. We not 
only are willing, we rejoice, to bear an ordi- 
narily painful thing for the benefit or pleas- 
ure of one whom we intensely love. Within 
certain limits, indeed, but still most truly, 
the bearing pain for such an end is a privi- 
lege to be sought, not a sorrow to be 
shunned. Universal experience proves this: 
it is one of the broad familiar features of 
human life. 

But when we consider this, do we not see 
that our natural feelings mislead us when 
they pronounce pleasant things to be the 
good ones, and the painful ones evil? So 
far from this being the case, things that we 
call painful, that are painful in our ordinary 
state, are essential conditions of our highest 
good. To us, there could not be love with- 
out them. We could never have felt the joy, 
never have had even the idea, of love, if sac- 
rifice had been impossible to us. In our 
truest and intensest happiness, that which is 
otherwise felt as pain is present. Pain, we 



44 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

may say, is latent,, in our highest state. It 
lies hidden and unfelt in the form of de- 
voted sacrifice; but it is there, and it would 
make itself felt as pain if the love which 
finds joy in bearing it were absent. Take, 
for example, the offices rendered with joy 
by a mother to her babe: let the love be 
wanting, and what remains? Not mere in- 
difference, but vexation, labor, annoyance. 
A gladly accepted pain is in the mother's 
love ; it is in all love that does not contradict 
the name. To take away from us the possi- 
bility of that which we feel as pain were to 
take its best part from life, to render it al- 
most — surely altogether — worthless. The 
possibility of love is given to us in our power 
of sacrifice; and loving brings the power 
into immediate action. 

To beings constituted as we are the possi- 
bility of love can be given only through the 
power of sacrifice. Our highest happiness 
consists in the feeling that another's good is 
purchased by us, that we — our labor or our 
loss — are the instrument through which it is 
conferred. Take away that element, and the 
joy alters its character, and becomes inevi- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 45 

tably less. We may still rejoice and be glad 
in the good fortune of the beloved object, 
but we can no more rejoice in giving it at our 
own expense. 

In our best happiness, then, what we 
otherwise term pain is swallowed up. It is 
embodied and mixed up in the joy. For do 
we not despise and loathe a man whose only 
thought in that which he calls love is of the 
pleasure he can receive? And further, by 
taking away the love, its sacrifices would be 
felt as pain: pain emerges, or comes out, 
from this joy by a taking away, or absence. 
And its presence, to one who should be lov- 
ing, might imply no evil state around him, 
but only something wanting in himself. 
For the very same things may be to us either 
painful, or in the highest degree productive 
of delight, of a delight which could not be 
without them. 

Remembering these things, then, what 
should we consider the presence of pain in 
the world to mean? Does it not mean that 
there is a want in man by which that becomes 
painful which should be joy? Does it not 
mean that a world in which so much of pain 



46 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

is present, is adapted — was altogether made 
— to be the scene of an overpowering, an ab- 
sorbing love? One element of the best hap- 
piness is given, namely, sacrifice: what does 
it imply but that the other should be present 
too? — the other, which is love. 

Let us think, then, of ourselves: our nat- 
ural feeling prompts us to exclude all pain- 
ful things; to found a bliss upon their ab- 
sence. But is not this an utter error, and 
were not its achievement fatal? Surely a 
truer knowledge lays its fullest and intensest 
grasp upon the painful elements of life, and 
holds them as the fundamental conditions of 
its joy. The reason we are made, or seem 
as if we were made, for pain, is that we are 
made for love ; the predominance of sacrifice 
is a sign and proof upon how good a plan 
the world was formed; upon how high a 
type of bliss. Our feeling it as pain, proves 
something wanting in ourselves. 

Doubtless we are right to loathe and re- 
pudiate pain, and count its endurance an 
evil. To be happy is good: to feel pain is 
evil, and the sign of evil. God meant us 
for the one, meant us to abhor and shrink 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 47 

from the other. But the question is, What 
is the happiness God has meant us for, the 
happiness to which human nature is fitted, 
to which it should aspire? Should it be that 
from which the painful is banished, or that 
in which pain is latent? Should pain be 
merely absent, or swallowed up in love and 
turned to joy? 

Surely we can answer but in one way. To 
wish the former were to choose the lesser 
good, to cut ourselves off from our chief 
prerogative. If God truly loved man, must 
He not have made him such, that by want 
of love pain should arise ; and that to him — 
ignorant and unloving as he is — the world 
should be one dark mystery of sorrow? How 
else should He have made us capable of joy, 
how else have made earth tolerable in the 
eyes of heaven? — in the eyes of that heaven 
which gazes on the Lamb that has been slain, 
and sees, unamazed, in Him the brightness 
of the Father's glory, the express image of 
His person. 

For if in the only worthy joy (the only 
happiness which, matching the dignity of 
man or filling his capacity, rightly deserves 



48 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

the name of human) , if in this there is neces- 
sarily latent the element of pain, so that by 
an absence it must be felt; — if in human joy 
pain is absorbed and taken up, not merely 
excluded or set aside, then we at once rise 
in our thoughts above ourselves. If this is 
our joy, then it is His also in whose image 
we were made. The pain that is latent in 
man's bliss is latent, too, in God's; in His 
most as He is highest: and that great life 
and death to which the eyes of men are ever 
turned, or wandering ever are recalled, re- 
veals it to us. 

We see it must be so. If God would show 
us Himself, He must show us Himself as a 
sufferer, as taking what we call pain and 
loss. These are His portion; from eternity 
He chose them. The life Christ shows us is 
the eternal life. He emptied Himself, and 
the pain became manifest; He put off His 
perfection, and the sorrow was hidden and 
lost in the fulness of His life no more. It 
was revealed as sorrow, becoming visible to 
human eyes ; piercing the immortal heart be- 
fore a breathless world, which, seeing Him 9 
sees and knows the Father. 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 49 

Thus our own experience may solve for 
us the problem, how God is incapable of suf- 
fering, and yet reveals Himself to us as a 
sufferer. The seeming contradiction here is 
only that which the intellect encounters in 
everything that is true of our own life. Love 
cannot be explained, made manifest of what 
nature it is, the secret of its happiness re- 
vealed, except by an exhibition of the toil, 
the abnegation, the sacrifice, that are in it. 
Seeking for happiness, craving for good, 
we grasp at pleasure and turn away from 
pain. God must teach us better, and to do 
so He shows us the root and basis of His 
own. Stripping off His infinitude, and tak- 
ing infirmity like ours, He bids us look and 
see ! The only happiness He has, or can be- 
stow, bears martyrdom with it. If He does 
not suffer, it is only that His life is per- 
fect; His love has no hindrance, no short- 
coming, and can turn all sacrifice to joy. He 
stands our great example, not exempting 
Himself from toils and sacrifices which He 
lays on us, binding heavy burdens, and 
grievous to be borne, upon men's shoulders, 
Himself not touching one ; but with so large 



50 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

a heart accepting them, that they are trans- 
figured into the very brightness of His 
glory, and our dim eyes cannot discern them, 
save as they are shown us with the brightness 
veiled, the glory banished, the love itself sub- 
dued to a less burning flame. Revealed 
therein in strong crying and tears, that re- 
call our own experience to ourselves, He 
makes us know with which part of it to link 
His name. It is sacrifice binds us to God, 
and makes us most like Him: sacrifice that 
to us is sorrow, wanting life and love; but 
to Him, supreme in both, is joy. 

And when we say pain is an evil, we can 
only rightly mean that our feeling it to be 
pain is an evil. That marks defect and 
want, failure of our proper manhood, short- 
coming from our privilege of joy. From 
pain we may well seek and pray to be deliv- 
ered; but by what deliverance? It may be 
banished in two ways — by taking away, or 
by adding. Pain m^y be removed passively 
by the removal of that which is its cause, 
letting us relapse into mere repose, which 
may seem joy by contrast, or by the deaden- 
ing of the sensibility, that shall banish alike 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 51 

pain and pleasure. But it may also be re- 
moved actively, positively; not by the ab- 
sence of the cause nor by diminished feeling, 
but by a new and added power, which shall 
turn it into joy — a joy like God's. 

In the presence of pain the basis is laid 
of an exquisite delight; should we not seek 
it? Should we not believe that God will give 
it? If the thought seems too great for us, 
is it not therefore more befitting Him, more 
like what we have learnt of Him? And if 
He must new-create us in order to give us 
happiness like this, has He not promised to 
create us anew? Nay, do we not find here 
confirmation of His promise, finding our 
need for its fulfilment? 

Since love, then, is in sacrifice, we see that 
to creatures such as we are, failing of our 
manhood, pain must be. We see that our 
Maker, assuming our condition in order that 
we may know Him, also assumes, and must 
assume, our sorrow, preeminent therein. We 
see, too, that deliverance from pain must be 
wrought out within: it must be by a change 
of life, and not of circumstance. However 
the latter may be altered, till love itself shall 



52 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

change this fact can never alter — that only 
in the form of that which we call sacrifice 
can our true good be given us. Whatever 
else may pass or change, of this we may be 
sure, that till God cease to love us we shall 
stand face to face with sacrifice. Of this, 
as of our Maker's presence, we may say, 
"If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: 
if I make my bed in Hades, behold, thou 
art there. If I take the wings of the morn- 
ing, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the 
sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and 
thy right hand shall hold me": for where 
God is, there is love. 



CHAPTER V 

THESE thoughts have been made 
clearer to my own mind by some 
others which our common experience has 
suggested to me. My attention was first 
drawn to them in this connection while en- 
gaged in gardening, and feeling how essen- 
tial a part of the pleasure which that occu- 
pation gave was furnished by the slight in- 
conveniences which it involved. Without 
the latter, I felt that the employment would 
have wanted very much of its zest. The lit- 
tle claim upon the endurance constituted a 
real part of the charm. As I became con- 
scious of this fact, it was natural to go on 
to reflect how completely it seems to be a 
law of our nature, that, in order to be thor- 
oughly enjoyable, and to continue so, our 
life must include more or less of willingly- 
accepted inconvenience. This inconvenience 
may be, in most cases, slight, but still (with 

53 



54 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

some exceptions which I shall refer to pres- 
ently) it seems to be in all cases necessary. 
There is inconvenience overcome, endurance 
accepted, to some extent, in every life that 
is permanently pleasurable; and this, inde- 
pendently of all moral considerations, mere- 
ly by the nature of our constitution. We 
see this fact strikingly exhibited in field 
sports, and in every kind of active amuse- 
ment. It reaches its height, perhaps, in the 
pleasure found now so widely in ascending 
mountains, which seems to be a really pain- 
ful task; but the same element is found al- 
most universally in sports. Look at the 
roughness and fatigue of cricket, the toil, 
and even pain, of a hard day's boating. 
Nay, how much less charm were there even 
in a picnic, if it were not for its inconveni- 
ences and little denials. 

But these are only special instances of a 
law that seems to be universal in our ex- 
perience. Whether4t may seem paradoxical 
or not, it is a fact in our nature that, with- 
out endurance, life ceases to be enjoyable; 
without pains accepted, pleasure will not be 
permanent. For the most part, among in- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 55 

telligent persons, this fact is so fully ac- 
cepted and acted upon, that they are hardly 
cQnscious how universally it is true. They 
take their inconveniences, accept their little 
pains— let us say, for example, the rising at 
a reasonable hour in spite of sloth, or the 
free use of cold water in spite of the shock 
— and reap their reward accordingly in a 
healthful, pleasurable life. But the law be- 
comes evident immediately in its breach; it 
asserts itself inevitably against the attempt 
to avoid it. A life from which everything 
that has in it the element of pain is banished, 
becomes a life not worth having; or worse, 
of intolerable tedium and disgust. There 
is ample proof in the experience of the fool- 
ish among the rich, that no course is more 
fatal to pleasure than to succeed in putting 
aside everything that can call for endurance. 
The stronger and more generous faculties of 
our nature, debarred from their true exer- 
cise, avenge themselves by poisoning and 
embittering all that remains. A striking il- 
lustration of this fact is given in the words 
reported to have been uttered by Lord 
Queensbury as he stood looking at the scene 



56 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

from Richmond Hill: — "Oh, that weari- 
some river! it will keep running, running, 
and I so tired of it."* 

But the records of luxury in all ages fur- 
nish a long succession of similar instances. 
And the whole principle is embodied in the 
now universally recognized doctrine of the 
necessity of work — itself an irksome thing 
— for happiness. 

This is the thought that occurred to me: 
in our healthful and natural life endurance 
is essential to pleasure. Our enjoyment, by 
the very construction of our nature, absorbs, 
and takes into itself as a necessary element, 
a certain amount of pain; that is, of what 
would, if it stood by itself, be pain. But 
when we recognize this fact we can hardly 
help remarking another also. The amount 
of endurance or pain that our pleasure will 
thus absorb, and turn into its own suste- 
nance, is not fixed. It varies, being in some 
cases more, and in some less ; and especially 
it varies with the intensity and perfectness 
of the life. A strong and healthy person 
can absorb into his pleasure a really large 

* Mrs. Trench's Memoirs. 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 57 

amount of what would otherwise be pain, 
that of a hard day's hunting or rowing, or 
the ascent of a considerable mountain; or 
he will enjoy a great amount of risk, as we 
read in the life of Stephenson, that the nav- 
vies in his day preferred the most danger- 
ous tasks. A weak person can enjoy much 
less — fatigue or discomfort soon spoils his 
pleasure; but a sick person, one in whom the 
bodily life is depraved or wanting in its per- 
fectness, can enjoy none. His pleasure can 
absorb no endurance at all. He must be 
shielded from all that is painful, from all 
that taxes, and to the strong man so delight- 
fully taxes, the power to bear. The pains 
which are the very conditions of enjoyment 
to the healthy man, become to him intoler- 
able, utterly unendurable and terrible. He 
must be laid upon a soft bed, guarded from 
every shake or jar, from every call upon his 
powers, from all loud sounds, or brightness 
even of the light. He can find pleasure only 
in that which is itself unendurable to the 
healthy man, the absence of all exertion. 

For when we go on to consider the facts in 
this connection, we see that the sick man 



58 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

finds intolerable, not only that element in 
healthy pleasure which demands endurance, 
and might be regarded as in itself painful, 
but that every kind of action (speaking gen- 
erally) is painful to him. The natural ex- 
ercise of the powers, which is the very source 
of healthy pleasure, is his agony. His whole 
feeling is inverted; that which is properly 
pleasure, and ought to be pleasure to him, 
is become his torment, and no effort can 
render it otherwise. 

Accordingly, in all our dealings with a 
sick man, and in all his thoughts respecting 
himself if he is capable of thinking truly, 
this inversion of his natural condition is 
recognized. It is remembered that what is 
properly pleasurable is painful to him, and 
that his pleasures are in things that should 
be to him worse than indifferent. When he 
is promised perfect enjoyment he does not 
look forward to the perfecting of the kind 
of pleasure which he needs in his sickness, 
or of the ease which he then desires; not to 
perfect rest, to beds so soft that his limbs 
cannot ache upon them, or food that shall 
nourish with no demand upon the vital en- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 59 

ergy. He looks forward to a change in his 
own capacities whereby his enjoyment shall 
be made different. 

In being promised ease, he is promised 
health; that is, to be able to find enjoyment, 
the true enjoyment of a man, in that which 
is pain to him, it may be intolerable and 
overwhelming pain; in exertion and endur- 
ance. He is to be delivered, by an increase 
or perfecting of his life, from pain, but by 
no means from all the things he feels as 
painful. The only possible condition of a 
true enjoyment is, that he shall find it in 
things that to him are painful; his only true 
deliverance is in an added power. 

Now this thought, which sprang so nat- 
urally from our every-day experience, con- 
nected itself at once with the thoughts that 
have preceded. Is not man sick, falling short 
of his perfect life, and therefore feeling 
as pain that which is the rightful condition 
of his joy? 

It is_:taie^iRfl|itrad are subject to pains, 
of body and of mind, which oftentimes are 
overwhelming, utterly beyond endurance, 
which no effort, no philosophy, can render 



60 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

otherwise than insupportable. The woes 
which surround human life often seem as if 
they could not be exaggerated; they seem 
to admit of no consolation, no alleviation. 
We cannot rejoice in them; we cannot rise 
above them. They penetrate our very 
hearts, and undermine the very sources of 
our strength. But though all this is true- 
though human misery is immense — it does 
not follow that the whole of it is not rightly 
the instrument and source of happiness. We 
see, in bodily disease, that our feeling cer- 
tain things utterly and intolerably painful, 
may arise not from evil in the things them- 
selves, but from want of a perfect life in 
us ; they may be the very conditions of nat- 
ural and healthful pleasure. 

And if we accept the thought of man as 
sick, does not the whole fact of human 
wretchedness, the heavy total of the pains 
of men, stand before us in this new light? 
Do we not receive (a joyful gift) a perfect 
inversion of our thought respecting it? All 
pains may be summed up in sacrifice; and 
sacrifice is — of course it is — the instrument 
of joy. To health, to life, it is so. If it is 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 61 

not so to us, what does that mean, but that 
we are sick? 

Man's life, his true and proper life, his 
health, is of such grandeur, of such intensity 
and scope, that it would absorb, and turn 
into the servitors of its joy, all that we now 
find intolerable pain, all agony and loss, 
Man's life is measured by his pains. It is 
such life, so large, so deep in consciousness, 
so rich in love, that in these sacrifices it can 
find its joy, its perfect satisfactions, its de- 
lights. These utter losses, and unfathom- 
able miseries, and cruel strokes that leave us 
nothing, are its pleasurable efforts, its re- 
joicing gifts, its glad activities. So far 
short we fall ; and so vast and glorious is the 
true human life. To apprehend it we must 
measure it by its pains, that is, by its capa- 
bility of sacrifice. Man's being is cast on 
that scale, planned to that magnitude; it 
claims that intensity: a scope and an inten- 
sity that should make the uttermost evil and 
sacrifice to the self — intolerable evils to us 
now — but as the healthful exercise, the 
hearty toil, that make the limbs throb with 
exuberance of life. 



62 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

So glorious is man's true being; so high 
we should elevate our hopes. The life we 
shall receive is such as would make all sacri- 
fices joy, even those extremest ones from 
which now we shrink most utterly. These 
things God hath prepared for them that love 
Him. It is true the height staggers our 
thought, and almost forbids our faith. Yet 
why should we shrink from it? Are we not 
to be joined with Christ in His glory; and 
is any height of joy in sacrifice, of power 
to give and to be glad in giving, too great 
for Him? 

And surely, this thought of man's great- 
ness is only like those new thoughts of great- 
ness which the study of God's works every- 
where enforces on us. Not less than 
immeasurably short of the reality fall all our 
natural thoughts of the Creator's works; 
as in respect to nature, so also in respect to 
man. He, too, is unutterably greater than 
we believed, unutterably greater than we can 
conceive. But then, God made him, how, 
therefore, can any thought be too high or 
glad? Man's perfect life could use all suf- 
fering for joy; that is, a love for others 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 63 

should be so powerful within us, and a con- 
sciousness of other's good should be so 
fully ours, such rapture should possess us, 
that all loss, all griefs, should be to us the 
trivial sacrifices which love delights to have 
the opportunity to make. That they are not 
so now reveals the condition of the sick man, 
who needs, not ease or pleasure from with- 
out, but health within. 

The evil of our pains should make us say, 
not how evil is this that we are called upon 
to bear, but how far short we fall — man falls 
— of the true human life, that this sacrifice 
is an evil to us. It should prompt us to seek 
deliverance, but deliverance by cure : the de- 
liverance that is brought by a perfected life ; 
the joy that is the joy of love, and finds its 
necessary food in sacrifice. Any other 
thought of happiness, any other anticipa- 
tion or desire, any anticipation that puts 
aside the sacrifice, is as if a sick man should 
desire, not restoration, not the power of en- 
joying effort and absorbing endurance into 
pleasure, but only soft and easy couches, 
rest and shaded light. This is to fall short 
in our desires, to make disease our measure, 



64 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

to demand a life that is not life, pleasures 
that are not truly pleasure. Must we not 
aspire higher? Must we not seek, desire, 
anticipate a happiness that is in giving; a 
life that is so wide, and high, and full, that 
it can take up, nay, must take up, all that 
is utterest sacrifice to us, and make it the 
very condition of its rejoicing energy? — a 
life to which it would be as impossible to use 
our poor self-pleasures, except for sacri- 
fice, as it would be to health to lead the life 
of sickness. 

The whole thought is involved in the fact, 
that devotedness and self -giving are the con- 
ditions of the joy of love; and that without 
love the life that love leads joyfully were 
full of pain. Man's perfect life is a life in 
which love can be perfect, and find no limi- 
tation ; it is a life so truly lived in others, so 
participant with them, that utter and un- 
bounded sacrifice is possible; the limitations 
of this mortal state bounding u& no more. 
It is the life of heaven. But the thought 
need not be left vague. Do not the words of 
Scripture, which speak of the union into one- 
ness of those who constitute the Church of 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 65 

Christ, supply to it a definite basis? Are 
we not to share a life wider and deeper than 
we now seem to possess; a life coextensive 
with Christ's body, in the great joy of which 
all loss and sacrifice of self are swallowed 
up ; the self remaining to us, indeed, only as 
purified and ennobled into the means of sac- 
rifice?* 

Is not this, then, the standard of human 
life? Such life as would make all the bitter 
pains, the unutterable losses and overpower- 
ing agonies of man, the means of a glad ser- 
vice, the rejoicing offerings of love? We 
must reckon, not the pains too great, but our 
life marred. It is not dark, but the bright- 
ness of a day that overwhelms our fevered 
eye. But make us whole, and joy will ban- 
ish pain. 

* If this idea should seem obscure, it may be suf- 
ficient to recall to our thoughts the representations 
given in Scripture of the Divine Being, as dwelling, 
and acting, and living in the creatures whom He re- 
generates. 



CHAPTER VI 

WE can return now to the subject 
which forms the foundation of the 
thoughts that have been expressed; namely, 
the redemption of man. If we recognize a 
want in our own nature, a condition like that 
of disease, making us feel pain in that which 
should be joyful, we feel at once that we 
have need of a deliverance, need of a cure. 
And seeing that this condition of want or 
disease affects not individuals only, but the 
whole human race, we feel that Man needs 
a restoration, a perfecting of his life. 
Man's nature, appearing as diseased, claims 
a restorer ; appearing as the victim of a per- 
verted feeling, which subjects it to evil, it 
needs to be redeemed from this. 

Now this is the thought to which refer- 
ence has been made in the idea of the re- 
demption of the world. That redemption 
is the raising up of man from the evil condi- 

66 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 67 

tion in which he feels sacrifice _as .J)ain, into 
a condition in which it is felt as joy, a con- 
dition of true and perfect life. 

Thus the idea stands in a definite light be- 
fore us. This is the change which man's na- 
ture needs : this is the change which it is re- 
ceiving. The redemption of man, as I have 
spoken or shall speak of it here, means this 
change; a change not only of his feelings 
and will, but of his actual state. I seek to 
regard all our experience in its relation to 
this work ; in the part which they bear in it I 
find the glory of our pains and the consola- 
tion of our griefs. 

For, if this work is being done, it is neces- 
sarily being done in all human experience; 
or rather, this experience of ours is that very 
work itself. Strange and unlike it as they 
may appear, these events which bring us joy 
or sorrow, perplexity or pleasure, gain or 
loss; these things in which we are actively 
engaged, or which are passively inflicted on 
us ; these are the carrying out of this work in 
man. So that we may take up each one of 
our pains and sorrows, and say, "Man's re- 
demption is carried out in this, is effected 



68 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

through it, demands this to be." It is no 
matter that it is so disconnected, so useless, 
so utterly insignificant. Nothing is discon- 
nected ; nothing that moves man's spirit and 
rouses his capacity of feeling is insignifi- 
cant; nothing that is linked — as all events 
are linked — inseparably into the great his- 
tory of man, is useless. If man's redemption 
is a fact, it is the fact of these experiences 
that may seem so small and objectless; the 
unseen fact of them, they seeming small 
only because it is unseen. 

The evidence that this work is accom- 
plished is drawn, of course, from the declara- 
tions of Scripture, which affirm a salvation 
bestowed on man, and to be wrought out in 
him; which promise that he shall be made 
alive in Christ, and receive an eternal life. 
And here I may briefly say that to my own 
mind the language of the New Testament 
appears unequivocally to affirm the redemp- 
tion of all men; their actual redemption 
from this evil and diseased state in which 
we now are; the actual raising up of all to 
a perfect life. To my own mind this uni- 
versality seems to be clearly expressed in 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 69 

Scripture, and to give an unutterable de- 
light to life. But it is not necessary that 
this should be believed in order for us to 
receive the happiness which the knowledge 
that our sufferings serve their part in the 
great work of redemption gives. That hap- 
piness may still rest upon their serving the 
good of others, though not all may share 
that good. In the words before quoted, St. 
Paul says, "I fill up that which is behind of 
the afflictions of Christ, for His body's sake, 
which is the Church." He does not say in 
this passage, as in so many others he at least 
appears to say, that the sphere of Christ's 
Church shall finally include the whole human 
race. And the happiness which flows from 
this thought may be shared by those who can 
believe it true of their own sufferings, even 
though they think that those on whose be- 
half God uses them are but a part and not 
the whole of men. 

On this point I may venture one remark. 
It seems to me that great difficulties have 
been rightly felt in recognizing in the lan- 
guage of Scripture any clear assertion that 
all men shall be brought to Christ, and spir- 



70 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

itually made alive through Him. There is 
much which, with thoughts such as ours have 
been, seems very expressly to affirm the con- 
trary. But it appears to me that a chief 
source of these difficulties has been our own 
corruption. As we are now, we feel, and 
cannot help feeling, that of the two evils, 
pain and sin, pain, if it be extreme, is the 
greater. By nature we fear suffering more 
than sinning. Now, reading the New Testa- 
ment with this feeling operating on our 
thoughts — as we are sure to do unless we 
are expressly on our guard against it — we 
can hardly fail to misunderstand its lan- 
guage, and to think of suffering or loss 
where it speaks of sin. So reading it, we 
may well see in its words mere hopeless ruin 
as the destiny of a large part of men. But 
if we keep watch over ourselves here, and 
remember that only he whose very life is 
death can feel suffering worse than sin, or 
could speak as if it were; if we remember 
that God's chief warnings, therefore, must 
be against, not what we fear most, but 
against that which, perhaps, we do not fear 
at all, the words of the New Testament pre- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 71 

sent themselves to us in a new light. And 
the apparent meaning of many passages that 
we may easily recall, which speak as if 
Christ's kingdom were to embrace each 
member of the human race, telling us that 
He will draw all men to Him; that every 
knee shall bow in His name ; that God shall 
be all in all ; — the apparent meaning of these 
passages may grow clear to our purged eyes 
as the true burden of the gospel. We may 
be able, giving an awful force to all its 
threatenings, to take to our gladdened hearts 
— our hearts made warm with a new life — 
its large and joyful words, which speak of 
a salvation achieved for all, in all to be ful- 
filled; a salvation of which one chief and 
most essential part consists in the very rem- 
edy of this perverted feeling. For when 
man finds only joy in sacrifice, there can no 
more be any evil felt by him as worse than 
sin. Sin, indeed, would stand as the one sole 
evil felt or capable of being felt by him, 
and in this would not his redemption be ful- 
filled? 

But while the belief that a redemption, a 
new creation of his nature, is being worked 



72 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

out in man rests primarily and essentially on 
the New Testament, yet it has other evi- 
dences which may well add strength to our 
conviction. True, it is a work that is un- 
seen, a fact that cannot be made visible to 
the eye of sense, a fact which, save for its 
revelation in Christ, could not have been dis- 
covered. Yet evidences of it may be found 
in many facts. Surely in the very constitu- 
tion of our nature, made as it is for sacrifice, 
constructed to find its chief joy only there, 
feeling, even in its degradation, that no other 
joys are fully worthy of it, proof is given 
that man is designed and destined for a life 
proportioned to his powers. 

And do not the very pain and loss by 
which man is surrounded, if we read them 
rightly, testify to the same thing? Not acci- 
dentally, not arbitrarily, do these assail him. 
They are rooted in the essential conditions of 
his being; they are inseparable from the 
structure of the world, and the relations 
which he bears to it. The individual must 
be sacrificed and suffer loss. It is his in- 
evitable lot; the total order of nature must 
be altered ere he can escape it. The neces- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 73 

sity for sacrifice is built into the structure of 
our being; it is the birthright, the inalien- 
able inheritance of life. What, then, can we 
say of it, but that it foretells and promises 
a state of being and a mode of life to which 
it shall not be alien and hostile; a life in 
which it shall exist as a kindred and friendly 
element, and to the fulness of which it shall 
be minister, as we know it may be. Must 
not the inevitable existence of pain and loss, 
to us, mean this? 

And human history, when it is closely 
scanned, confirms the thought. Dark and 
unmeaning as it looks, this at least is visible 
in it, that without sacrifice no permanent 
satisfaction or truly good result is suffered 
to be attained. Incessantly man aims at 
ends which do not involve self-abandon- 
ment; incessantly they are denied to him; 
or, when gained, deceive his hope. Satis- 
faction is withheld; the best founded hopes 
prove vain ; the highest powers fail ; experi- 
ments, on which the brightest expectations 
have been founded, fall in ruin; no lesser 
end suffices; but, by failure and discontent, 
man is driven ever onward. If we ask our- 



74 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

selves, To what goal? can we not well fore- 
see the answer? He is driven onward to 
this: to accept loving sacrifice as his good. 
These facts are evident in human life even 
as it is: that man is framed for joy in sacri- 
fice; that until it can be made his joy, sacri- 
fice must be his torment, for it never qan 
be banished; that without the willing ac- 
ceptance of sacrifice, no end is really an- 
swered in human life, no satisfaction that 
is worthy of humanity achieved. Add to 
these things the known fact that our nature 
is imperfect, and the promise given of its 
renovation, and does not their meaning be- 
come manifest? — that man's redemption is 
the end for which this present human life 
exists, the unseen end which it achieves. 



CHAPTER VII* 

IF we recognize that our feeling in respect 
to sacrifice is inverted, and, as in sick- 
ness, the very condition of our rightful joy 
is become the source of pain, we see that our 
thought has also been perverted; we have 
judged of good and evil falsely. And thus 
does not light arise upon us, a light in which 
we cannot but rejoice? Do not two mysteries 
disappear: the mystery that God reveals 
Himself in Christ, taking suffering and 
death to show Himself to us; and the mys- 
tery of the pain and sorrow of which our 
life is full? Seeing what God's joy is, we 
see why Christ alone can reveal Him. The 
nature of the joy that is in love cannot 
otherwise be shown than in taking sacrifice, 
and bearing sorrow. To reveal God there 
must have been presented to our eyes a Man 
of Sorrows, who chose and willingly em- 

* This chapter is partly a recapitulation. 

75 



76 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

braced our griefs ; for we feel that to be sor- 
row which is the very basis of His life and 
blessedness. 

Nor could our human life be otherwise 
than full of sorrow too. We are dealt 
with — most happy those who most are dealt 
with so — according to the nature of our 
manhood, not according to our false feeling 
of it; according to the true good, not ac- 
cordingto our perverted desires. Our good is 
secured in the felt loss; for our nature is 
larger than we feel: our ends are most sub- 
served when most we feel them set at naught, 
for our destiny is higher than we know. The 
best is given us, though we would choose 
the worse: the basis of the largest and high- 
est happiness, though we would choose the 
lower and the less. We are sacrificed, un- 
willing, for others' good, unseen: but it is 
no mystery that we are so; because in will- 
ing sacrifice for others' good, known, seen, 
and felt even as His own, lies God's own 
blessedness ; the blessedness of all who truly 
can be blest. The broken remnants of the 
perfect life of joy are these: these pains, 
these multiplied and dire distresses, these 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 77 

clouds which to us veil the heavens in despair. 
Nor are they remnants only ; they are germs 
from which the perfect life may grow; they 
are the omens of victory and delight; the 
basis upon which is to be built up a joy for 
which they cannot be too great. Of all 
that could not be spared from our life, our 
sacrifice is that which could be spared the 
least. 

And that there is a perversion of man's 
feelings and desires, a radical want in our na- 
ture, is a known fact, proved long ago, and 
resting on evidence which needs no fresh con- 
firmation. The disease of humanity has writ- 
ten its proofs on every page of history, has 
engraved itself indelibly on the human heart. 
The fact is already known, and we are jus- 
tified therefore in using it to guide us. 
For his full life and happiness, man must be 
changed : we know it well. Surely, then, this 
change, to which we must look forward, may 
be one that shall make sacrifice his joy. Nay, 
for his perfect holiness and bliss, it must be 
so. For unless sacrifice is joy, holiness be- 
yond temptation, and happiness without a 
sorrow, cannot be. 



78 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

But if it thus proves itself to the reason 
that pain is sacrifice, and is good felt as evil 
through disease, it proves itself still more 
to the heart. Nothing can make pain so 
good as that it should be borne for others. 
So it becomes a privilege. And this is the 
inevitable demand of the human heart when 
it seeks for consolation. Even the natural 
feelings of men, unaided by that revelation 
of life which shows us this consecrated sor- 
row as its central fact, have often risen to 
confidence in the belief, and to happiness and 
strength based on it. The thought is beau- 
tifully expressed in the following passage 
by the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, show- 
ing that even in darkness and insufficiency, 
it is yet native to the soul : — 

"Just as we must understand when it is 
said, thatiEsculapius prescribed to this man 
horse-exercise, or bathing in cold water, or 
going without shoes, so we must understand 
it when it is said, that the nature of the uni- 
verse prescribed to this man disease or muti- 
lation, or loss, or anything of the kind. For, 
in the first place, 'prescribed' means some- 
thing like this: he prescribed this for this 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 79 

man as a thing adapted to procure health; 
and, in the second case, it means, that which 
happens to (suits) every man is fixed in a 
manner for him suitably to his destiny. For 
this is what we mean when we say that things 
are suitable to us, as the workmen say of 
the squared stones in walls or the pyramids, 
that they are suitable when they fit one into 
another in some kind of connection. For 
there is altogether one fitness (or harmony) . 
And as the universe is made up out of all 
bodies to be such a body as it is, so out of all 
existing causes necessity (destiny) is made 
up to be such as it is. And even those who 
are completely ignorant understand what I 
mean, for they say, It (necessity, destiny) 
brought this to such a person. This, then, 
was brought, and this was prescribed to him. 
Let us, then, receive these things, as well as 
those which iEsculapius prescribes. Many, 
as a matter of course, even among his pre- 
scriptions, are disagreeable, but we accept 
them in hope of health. Let the perfecting 
and accomplishment of the things which the 
common nature judges to be good, be judged 



80 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

by thee to be of the same kind as thy health. 
And so accept everything that happens, even 
if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to 
this, to the health of the universe, and to the 
prosperity and felicity of Zeus (the uni- 
verse) . For he would not have brought on 
any man what he has brought, if it were not 
useful for the whole. Neither does the na- 
ture of anything, whatever it may be, cause 
anything which is not suitable to that which 
is directed by it. For two reasons, then, it is 
right to be contented with that which hap- 
pens to thee ; the one because it was done for 
thee, and prescribed for thee, and, in a man- 
ner, had reference to thee, originally from 
the most ancient causes spun with thy des- 
tiny; and the other, because even that which 
comes severally to any man is to the power 
which administers the universe a cause of fe- 
licity and perfection, nay, even of its contin- 
uance. For the integrity of the whole is 
mutilated, if thou cuttest off anything what- 
ever from the conjunction, and the contin- 
uity either of the parts or of the causes. And 
thou dost cut off , as far as it is in thy power, 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 81 

when thou art dissatisfied, and in a manner 
triest to put anything out of the way." * 

And this feeling that the true consolation 
in distress must be found in its use and sub- 
servience to others' good, breaks out in a 
more exquisite and Christian form in Mil- 
ton's poem on his blindness. Having heaped 
up the description of its distresses and pri- 
vations, he turns, for his rejoicing in it, to 
this thought, and this only : — 

"They also serve who only stand and wait." 

And if they w T ho stand and wait, do not those 
who suffer too? Is it conceivable that God 
should give to some, whom He blesses with 
health and vigor and large gifts of influence, 
the privilege of greatly serving Him, of do- 
ing a wide work of use for others ; and that 
this privilege, which none else can equal or 
supply, He withholds from others from 
whom He takes health and strength, and 
every gift but that of suffering? Does He 
give the one the blessedness of serving, and 

* "The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Anto- 
ninus": translated by George Long, p. 65. 



82 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

refuse it to the other? "Behold, my ways are 
equal, saith the Lord." 

If our life were ordained to be good, 
truly, satisfyingly good, it could be made so 
only in one way. It must be a life of sacri- 
fice, for all other goods fall short — we know 
they fall infinitely short— of this; and it 
must be sacrifice for unseen ends, because 
the best ends must be unseen by us. To be 
the best, our life must be sacrifice, and for 
ends unseen. It must be, therefore, to us, 
just what our life is. Must we not believe, 
then, that our life is this : the best? 

In its fruitless-seeming pains and failures 
it fulfils the conditions of being the best life, 
of presenting the highest form of good, and 
of being turned to the best ends. It is this 
God calls upon us to believe ; this is a demand 
He makes for faith, showing us, to justify 
and confirm it, a life, like our own, of sorrow 
and humiliation ; or if in this unlike our own, 
unlike only because the sorrow was greater, 
and the humiliation more profound ; a life of 
sorrow in which the meaning and the end are 
no more concealed, but made manifest to all. 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 83 

Revealing so the secret of our life, He calls 
on us for faith. 

And so the pain of life is made good — all 
its pain; not indeed to our sensuous feeling, 
but to that deeper feeling which rules and 
subordinates the other. This faith has power 
to make pain good; to make us place above 
all price that which we most should shrink 
from. Only let the love be strong enough, 
and pain cannot be too great, nor loss too 
absolute. 

And therefore, feeling that the heart here 
becomes the judge (the reason having given 
its assent), appealing to the heart, to that 
moral feeling on which the existence of God 
Himself rests firm in man's belief, have we 
not answer, distinct and clear, that pain must 
be sacrifice; a privilege, and not a loss? 
Does not the thought, once seen to be possi- 
ble, affirm itself as necessary, and refuse to 
be held in doubt? Does it not link itself with 
the belief in God, so that we are compelled 
to say, that if God is, then pain is sacrifice 
— sacrifice for man? For if we think other- 
wise, then do we not choose to join evil with 
His name? Not to believe our pains serve 



84 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

others' good, and are the fact of man's re- 
demption, is but to disbelieve in God. It is 
to doubt His goodness, and contradict the 
very evidence on which we assert His being. 
Once recognized in its true meaning, the 
thought ceases to be a question of argument 
and balanced evidence ; it sinks into the soul, 
and becomes part of that deep conviction on 
which all religion rests. Pain cannot be in- 
terpreted otherwise than thus, when once we 
see that it can be thus interpreted. The heart 
rises up from its chains and rejoices. God 
has revealed Himself; He has manifested 
joy, and we see it and are glad. Amid our 
tears we smile, for when our woes are deep- 
est, then our joys are highest. Then we are 
likest Him, are nearest to the dignity of 
manhood; partakers most in that on which 
all living joy is based, needing only that our 
life be perfected to make it joy. 

We seek to be delivered from pain and 
sorrow, and God designs to deliver us. 
Vainly we seek, but He accomplishes. Our 
end is not mistaken, but we mistake the 
means. We seek deliverance by taking 
away; He gives deliverance by adding; 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 85 

' 'Tis life of which our nerves are scant, 
More life and fuller that we want" ; 



and God our Father, who knows our disease 
and provides the remedy, leads us also to see 
our need of it. 

Surely it is not hard thus to turn and keep 
our thoughts, recognizing our own too nar- 
row life, and our too contracted heart there- 
with, that makes us seek a good too small, 
and be too easily content ; that gives us a con- 
tent which cannot be undisturbed, desires 
which God cannot gratify, because that 
would be to curse instead of blessing; to 
curse instead of blessing him for whom He 
has ordained the highest blessedness. Surely 
it is not hard to be on our guard against 
ourselves, and to remember that our wanting 
and enfeebled nature misleads us, makes us 
grasp at remedies that are no remedies, at 
goods that are too small and pitiful for hu- 
man good; — not hard to aspire after more, 
and feel that our only joy must be in that 
which we already know as the highest and 
the best. Surely we can learn to shape our 
prayer for health, not for alleviations; for 



86 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

power to enjoy the good, not for the false 
goods our sickness can enjoy; for power to 
rise up from man's false thought to God's 
true* 

When, as reward, the prospect of our fu- 
ture grows into infinite glory, the thought of 
human nature rises into an elevation uncon- 
ceived ; God appears before us infinite afresh 
in tenderness; and the darkness of human 
sorrow, all the sad failure and agony of life, 
shining with the brightness of Christ's own 
sacrifice, are changed into the instruments 
and prophecies of joy. 

Surely it is not hard to think; — not, I 
want self -good to make me happy; but, I 
want life to make sacrifice my joy! And 
thus there is no mystery in pain. The world 
were an utter and hopeless mystery if pain 
were not. Where, then, would be the basis 
and the root of love, the prophecy of an en- 
larged and an ennobled nature? where the 
revelation of our life in Christ? 

But there are some difficulties that will 
probably suggest themselves in respect to 
this thought. Two of these especially de- 
mand notice. 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 87 

1. It may be felt that there can be no satis- 
factory treatment of the question of pain 
without a reference to sin. Is not sin the 
radical cause of all other evil, and without it 
would not man have had an entire immunity 
from suffering? 

2. If we receive the thought that sacrifice 
is itself a good, and that painful things truly 
are the best, will it not lead us to voluntary 
choice and preference of pain to pleasure? 
In a word, would it not reestablish the long- 
disproved theory of asceticism? 

In reference to the first of these questions 
very few words are required. So far from 
the connection of pain with sin being called 
in question by the view that has been given, 
it is emphatically asserted. The whole 
thought consists in tracing out how pain 
arises and must arise from sin. From sin 
comes that diseased and wanting state of 
man whereby alone pain can be felt. With- 
out sin pain had not been; for there had 
not been that perversion of feeling, and lack 
of life, whereby sacrifice is felt as pain. 
Pain is from sin, but sacrifice is not. The 
conditions of good and of happiness are not 



88 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

altered by it. These ever were to be found 
in sacrifice, and ever must be. Therefore it 
is that where sin has entered, and death by 
sin, pain must be. 

And if it should be asked, How, then, did 
Christ become subject to pain, seeing that in 
Him was no sin? the answer is found in the 
fact that Christ took our infirmity; the dis- 
ease of our nature was laid on Him, that He 
might remove it. He shared our feeling, 
that He might reveal the Father to us, and 
deliver us from the evil that He shared. 



CHAPTER VIII 

BUT still this question remains : If the 
good of human life is found in that 
which we feel as painful, should we not seek 
pain rather than pleasure ? Would not the 
acceptance of this idea lead us to the arbi- 
trary choice of suffering, to the wilful giving 
up of all that makes life joyous, the abroga- 
tion of the sanctities of home, the deliberate 
extinction of all that civilizes. 

Though this question is naturally sug- 
gested by the thoughts which precede, noth- 
ing can be farther from their real spirit. It 
is because the things in which we find suffer- 
ing are the sole condition of a full and per- 
fect happiness that they are good. It is be- 
cause life ought to be joyful that we have 
claimed this place, as joy-giver, for sorrow. 

Pain is evil; it marks, and is token of, dis- 
ease. It bespeaks want and loss. Thinking 
thus, we do not seek pain; we do not seek 

89 



90 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

even to be resigned to it: we seek its utter 
destruction, the doing away all possibility 
even of its presence. Our hearts are avari- 
cious, rather, of delight, and refuse to be 
satisfied with anything less than the utmost 
that we can receive. 

For, evidently, it is an entirely different 
thing to say, Sacrifice is the good; and to 
say, Pain is good. The association of pain 
with sacrifice, as we have seen — nay, as we 
know so well by experiences, happily, we may 
believe, becoming more familiar in human 
life — is unnecessary and partial, not con- 
stant and inevitable. The true affinities of 
sacrifice are with pleasure, with rapture even. 
It is only by evil or want within, that sacri- 
fice can be otherwise than glad. 

To dwell with joy, with deliberate choice, 
on sacrifice, even to refuse to all else the 
rightful name of good, is not to praise or 
to sanction pain, but to affirm emphatically 
that it ought not to be; nay, that it ought 
not to be possible. That to which it has at- 
tached itself, the very root from which it 
seems to grow (though not, in truth, does it 
grow from that root, but from quite another, 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 91 

and it is a fatal error which thus mistakes its 
source), should yield the opposite. There 
should be no pain to man: from him, as he 
should be, sorrow and sighing should flee 
away — but not by the taking away of sacri- 
fice. 

If there be any difficulty felt here, the 
source of it will become quite manifest by 
recalling the illustration of sickness. Let us 
conceive, again, a sick man saying, "Alas! 
all motion of my limbs, all attempts to take 
exercise, are an intolerable pain to me ; I can- 
not endure it" ; and that the reply was made 
to him, "Courage, my dear friend; do not let 
yourself think of that as painful in itself, 
though it is exquisite and unendurable tor- 
ture to you: that is the secret of the strong 
man's pleasure, and you shall come to 
have perfect and now almost inconceivable 
delight in it. Do not let yourself confuse 
the poor comfort, necessary as it may be 
to you, of sinking on your bed and lying 
still, with the true enjoyments of a man." 
Would this reply be thought a praise and 
recommendation of pain, or to advise the 
wilful choice of it? Surely not. It would 



92 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

simply be to encourage the sick man to keep 
his standard of pleasure high enough, and 
not to let it be degraded by his perverted 
feeling. 

It is, in this respect, precisely the same 
thing when we rebuke ourselves for our false 
thoughts, and urge upon ourselves to recog- 
nize that, in the experience of suffering and 
loss which we feel even as unendurable dis- 
tress, we must look for, and shall find, the 
source of joy. 

In another way the true relations of this 
thought respecting pain may be illustrated. 
Let it be assumed that our object is joy, that 
this is the good at which we aim. Now here 
is in our life this fact of sacrifice, of individ- 
ual suffering, opposing and preventing its 
perfect attainment ; hurting, harming, often 
rendering joy impossible. Whence and what 
is the remedy to be? How is the hurtful 
thing to be rendered harmless, the mischief 
to be neutralized? Our whole knowledge of 
nature and of life concurs in giving one an- 
swer : it must be turned to use. Things cease 
to hurt us then, and then only permanently, 
when they are made to serve our good. Nor 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 93 

can it be otherwise ; for nothing can be anni- 
hilated, nothing hindered from having, in 
some form or other, its full effect. The 
mere putting away or putting down evils has 
never succeeded. They return with a vio- 
lence increased by the delay. The one con- 
dition upon which we can really avoid suffer- 
ing by hurtful things is that we should use 
them and make them serve us. A striking 
instance — though it is but an instance of a 
universal law — is given by the problem, with 
which every large body of persons has to 
strive, of disposing of the waste materials 
of their life. Hurtful to a high degree, these 
waste materials are the source of inevitable 
disease if they are not put utterly away. But 
how thus utterly put them away? There is 
but one method that is truly efficient, and 
that is, to make them subservient to the in- 
crease of the means of life, to render them 
the fertilizers of our lands, the source of 
food. The drainage of towns will either 
poison or be an enormous tax, or it will feed. 
The condition of its ceasing to be an evil is, 
that it shall become a good. Necessarily it 
is so: its effects cannot be made null; our 



94 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

only choice is, shall they work our mischief 
or our benefit? 

Now to point out that the noxious mate- 
rials of our bodily life are in themselves a 
source of good, is not to encourage men to 
accept, or to deter them from removing, their 
ill effects. It is to open the path to their 
removal, and to stimulate the work. It sub- 
stitutes for futile efforts at escape or sup- 
pression the rational plan of use. 

It is such a change as this that would en- 
sue in our practical life from the acceptance 
of the thought that sacrifice is the source of 
joy, and that it is associated with pain to us 
only by the want that is in ourselves. It 
would never prompt us to seek pain, never 
lead us to choose it for its own sake, never 
lead us to undervalue joy. It would make 
enjoyment more sacred in our eyes, would 
raise it to a holy significance, making it teach 
us lessons beyond itself. It is an image — 
feeble, partial, and too small though it be — 
of that which should be, in its perfection, 
universal in our life. It carries on our 
thoughts to a higher joy, that should be never 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 95 

absent, being fullest in those portions of our 
life whence all joy now is banished. 

But further, this view not only guards us 
from the arbitrary choice of pain, it enables 
us to trace how that abuse arose, and whence 
sprang that ascetic and self-denying spirit, 
which, while not without its grandeur, has 
inflicted so many injuries on men. Mankind 
have always recognized a goodness in things 
that are painful. In no time or place has the 
feeling been wholly absent; but they have 
not always understood the reason. It was 
not recognized that these things are good 
only because they are sacrifice, and subserve 
others' welfare, and are therefore the true 
source of gladness; that they are good in a 
familiar and human sense, because they are 
adapted to give joy. Hence men unavoid- 
ably mistook, and attributed the goodness 
they could not but recognize in them to that 
which is emphatically not good — to that 
which is the sign of our own evil — the pain 
that was connected with them. They as- 
cribed to pain the goodness which belongs to 
sacrifice as the giver, above all other things, 
of joy. A strange and yet an inevitable in- 



96 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

version of thought, while the affections had 
not as yet fully recognized the joy that is in 
sacrifice, nor faith apprehended the relation 
of all human life to the unseen work that 
God does in man. 

It was thus asceticism arose, seeking pain 
as good, self-denial as an end; and thus it 
failed. But the lesson it teaches remains for 
us. There is good in that which we find pain- 
ful: the human soul does and will recognize 
it ; nor can luxury, nor scorn, nor the history 
of innumerable ills wrought by pursuing 
pain, prevent. Man's soul recurs to it in 
spite of experience, in spite of enlighten- 
ment, in spite of ease. 

Surely one thing alone can cure asceticism 
of its error, and free mankind from its dan- 
gers ; and that is to recognize the true nature 
of the good that is in sacrifice; that it is 
good, not for itself, nor because it involves 
pain, but precisely because it is not for itself, 
and is the true root of pleasure. If this be 
recognized, asceticism cannot again arise to 
distort life and tax humanity beyond its 
powers ; the elements of our nature in which 
it has its root are turned into another chan- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 97 

nel, and find their satisfaction in deeds ani- 
mated by another spirit. 

A perfect guide, indeed, is given us thus in 
respect to the acts of sacrifice we should or 
should not undertake. Only that painful 
thing is good which has in it the root of pleas- 
ure. And this is that alone which serves oth- 
ers' good. Therefore no arbitrary, self- 
chosen sacrifice is good ; there is no source of 
joy in that; it fails of the first condition. 
Only that sacrifice is good which either we 
accept for another's sake, ourselves seeing 
and choosing the result ; or that which serves 
a like end unseen by us; and surely better 
serves a better end, being in God's hands, and 
not ours. For seen or unseen service sacri- 
fice is good, but only when it is for service. 

And this service either we accomplish for 
ourselves, or God works for us. We accom- 
plish it when we consciously act from love or 
duty, and are blest in witnessing the service 
rendered. But God works it for us when He 
inflicts on us pains or losses; that is, when 
necessity enforces them, or right commands. 
In these He is our minister, our Steward, to 
bestow better than we could do the service of 



98 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

our love. In sacrifices that we cannot escape, 
that come from Providence or deeds of men 
who in this are God's instruments, and in 
sacrifices for which He calls in duty, we rec- 
ognize His hand, and know that they are 
used by Him. We feel our hearts glowing 
with a delight that humility does not forbid, 
"in this the Lord hath need of us." So far, 
He uses and blesses us, undertaking Himself 
to be the dispenser of our gifts. 

The best in life then, reading it by faith, as 
seeing the invisible (which not to do is blind- 
ness and self -chosen error) , the best in life is 
that part of it wherein there is inflicted on us, 
or rather accepted from us, inevitable sacri- 
fice; it is in losses that we cannot escape, 
pains that God calls on us to bear, bafflings 
from which no effort can set us free, no up- 
rightness deliver ; or in that part of it where- 
in the voice of duty bids us incur loss or 
pain, or leave unacted the deeds that would 
delight us most. These things are the best 
in life ; for these are God using us, these are 
His taking our poor services — poor at the 
best, though they may be great to us — and 
Himself using them in ways too good, too 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 99 

deep and wide for us to see. These are our 
contribution to the redemption of the world, 
felt as painful because the sources of a joy 
too great, which we make our own by freely 
yielding, and accepting them; thus making 
God's deed ours. Must not this be the best 
in life, the highest privilege? We link our 
weakness with omnipotence; our blindness 
with omniscience. This is the privilege of 
the destitute, the sick, the feeble, of those 
who are thwarted and cast down, who cannot 
save themselves. Behold, to them too it is 
given to save others. 

Next to this privilege in goodness, among 
the things that life can offer us, come the 
sacrifices we can bear willingly for the good 
of others; less good, indeed, but seeming 
more to us, a good that we can see, and con- 
sciously subserve. 

These are the portions of our life that rise 
to the level of true goodness. Each yields 
us joy in proportion to our love; the greatest 
privilege demanding for its joy, even be- 
cause it is the greatest, faith as well as love. 

Besides these, and separated from them by 
an immeasurable interval, there are the pleas- 



100 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

ures which are not of sacrifice, the pleasures 
of mere enjoyment; not truly good, yet not 
without their value. These are the portions 
of our life that cannot be employed for their 
best use; that our disability compels us to 
leave unturned to their true account ; the al- 
leviations which our sickness needs, and must 
bow itself to accept. 

There are then, in this respect, three ele- 
ments in our life: — First, the perfect good, 
which comes to us in the form of providen- 
tial and inevitable sacrifice, or loss that right 
demands, on the full gladness of which we 
enter by faith, knowing in our hearts that 
which we cannot see. Next, there is the 
good, less, but still great and worthy of our 
manhood, the serving others consciously, and 
of our own free will, for ends within our 
sight, the joy of which is in proportion to our 
love. In this is included all honest and un- 
selfish work. And lastly, there are the pleas- 
ures we can gain for ourselves, the satisfac- 
tions of an individual kind with which our 
life is so abundantly surrounded. These last 
mark our feebleness and want ; but they are 
needful for us, and our enjoyment of them 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 101 

is essential; In so far as they give joy, they 
are types and reflections of the perfect life, 
though in a ; negative and inverse form. We 
understand their nature if we look on them 
as like the reliefs and perverted pleasures 
which the sick man demands ; not good, but 
to us necessary, and by us felt as good. This 
necessity and this feeling mark our disabil- 
ity, our need of a restored and perfect life. 
And thus we see, from another point of 
view, the error of asceticism. The attempt 
to render man independent of self -enjoy- 
ment is an ignoring of his disease; it is an 
attempt to act as if in health while health is 
wanting to us. It is not only our right, it is 
our duty to epjoy and to be happy. This is 
evident on all grounds. It is fitting to our 
state, and it is practically right. Pleasure 
does us good if gratefully and lovingly ac- 
cepted; the nature often expands and blos- 
soms under it as under no other influence. 
And suffering oftentimes, not felt as the 
spring of joy it is, sours, cramps, and hard- 
ens. We cannot dispense with joy; we were 
never meant to dispense with it; but we 
should seek it rightly. 



102 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

Neither is there any tendency in the 
thought of sacrifice as the true source of joy 
to diminish the pleasurableness of that which 
we may call self -pleasure, or in any way to 
mar our natural enjoyments. It may, in- 
deed, throw them into the shade, and relax 
somewhat (would to God it might!) the pas- 
sion of our grasp upon them and pursuit 
after them ; but this is only by bringing them 
into the presence of another and superior 
pleasure. It is but as the boy less values 
childish sports as he grows into an apprecia- 
tion of the serious gratifications of maturity, 
and sees that they have served their purpose 
in awakening capacities and calling forth de- 
sires they were never meant to fill. 



CHAPTER IX 

TWO things might be here attempted: 
on the one hand, to trace farther the 
bearing of these thoughts upon our custom- 
ary views ; and on the other, to show how they 
might influence our life. But it seems better 
to leave them now untouched. These few 
pages have been written rather for some than 
for all, for those whom a special discipline 
may have prepared to welcome them; and to 
these I commit the thought, painfully con- 
scious of my inability to say it as it should 
be said, an inability which those to whom I 
have written will at once feel most deeply, 
and most willingly forgive. To them I may 
say — for they whose tongues have often fal- 
tered and been dumb from very eagerness of 
passion, and dread lest any words, even the 
best, should spoil their story, will understand 
me — that great desire and fear have hindered 
me. These words I have stammered 

103 



104 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

through; let them read, in their feebleness, 
reverence; a tribute to the sacredness of 
grief, made more sacred by the glory of its 
consolation, 

I do not seek to show whether, or in what 
way, other thoughts, natural and perhaps 
established thoughts, might need to be modi- 
fied in order not to conflict with these. There 
would probably be much less demand for 
change than might be supposed by those to 
whom the preceding thoughts may seem new. 
It may, however, serve to guard against mis- 
take, if I say that of course no meritorious 
character is ascribed to human sufferings. 
Man's redemption is accomplished in them; 
not in any way by virtue of them; the resto- 
ration of humanity is carried out in our ex- 
perience, not wrought by us. I need scarcely 
say that, because in these pages man's condi- 
tion has been compared to that of disease, 
it is not to be supposed that other aspects of 
his state are not recognized, especially his sin- 
fulness; or that Christ's work in relation to 
sin is lightly valued. But there has been 
the less reason for reference to the&e things, 
because I have left untouched the question 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 105 

of sin, and designedly limited myself to a 
smaller problem. Hereafter light may per- 
haps be thrown, even upon that prof oundest 
of all mysteries, man's revolt from God, and 
deliberate choice of evil. I may perhaps be 
pardoned for thinking that to understand 
pain aright may tend to lessen, rather than 
to aggravate, the difficulty of the greater 
mystery of sin. 

It may seem to some that more mention 
should be made of pains that arise from sym- 
pathy, and so have their source in love. Let 
me say that, as these are among the acutest 
of human sufferings, an emphatic reference 
has been made to them in that which has pre- 
ceded. Love can transform them, though it 
gives them birth. While any loved ones sor- 
row and are in distress, sympathy with them 
must be sorrowful too ; but if all sacrifice is 
made joyful, then sympathy with others' sac- 
rifice will be sympathy with their joy. These 
sorrows, also, man's perfect life will turn 
into rejoicing. 

In so far as these thoughts respecting pain 
depend on a recognition of unseen ends 
served by it, it seems to me that the recent 



106 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

tendency of the human mind is wonderfully, 
and surely most happily, in harmony with 
them. What better could the students of 
Nature and the students of Humanity agree 
in telling us than this — their great lesson in 
these modern days — that the true essence and 
meaning of all things is hidden from our 
natural sight? What is this but to echo back 
the words we have so familiarly heard from 
childhood upward, till they have perhaps 
partly lost their force, which bid us live as 
seeing the invisible, and walk, not by sight, 
but by faith? If this is the last lesson of 
science, it is also the first lesson of religion; 
perhaps now better to be learnt than ever be- 
fore, and better understood, because reiter- 
ated from this new region, and enforced by 
this new evidence. To understand or feel 
our life aright, we must regard something 
not visible to ourselves : we must, in fact, be 
using faith. This, science tells us ; this, phi- 
losophy. Shall they tell it to us in vain — to 
us who need so deeply to believe and act 
upon it, whose whole life is shrouded in dark- 
ness if it be not true, and may be, nay, must 
be, radiant with an unutterable glory and de- 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 107 

light if it be true? Shall we refuse God's 
gifts because they come to us from unex- 
pected quarters? shall we refuse to listen to 
this confirmation of the gladdest message, 
because it is given in unfamiliar tones? 

And in respect to the practical bearing of 
these thoughts respecting pain, I refrain 
from speaking, partly because I feel incom- 
petent, but more because I feel that it is not 
necessary. That they must have practical in- 
fluence where they are truly felt, surely is 
evident: what influence they should have, 
perhaps, is better left to each person's heart 
than stated in another's words. If the 
thought can sink and take root in the soul, 
it will bear fruit, better fruit spontaneously 
than if conformed to any pattern. Nor, in- 
deed, are circumstances so much alike in dif- 
ferent cases that external actions can be con- 
formed to special rules. This seems enough : 
a beautiful external life is the fruit of life 
within, especially of that life which dwells 
in joy. If joy could be brought to sorrow- 
stricken hearts, their path would blossom 
with good deeds; the gladness within would 



108 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 

overflow in acts of heroism and devotion, not 
uncalled for even yet. 

And does not joy grow out of sorrow 
when we see it thus — an infinite and tender 
joy passing all other? Do we not feel the 
very throbbings of God's heartland see even 
this sad world beautiful and good beyond 
conception, beyond hope ; the poor, the miser- 
able, the blighted and shipwrecked lives 
clothed with a sublimity grand, and yet ex- 
quisitely tender, that pales before it the best 
joys of earth, fair and blessed though they 
be? It is good to be blest in health, and 
strength, and family, and friends, and pros- 
pects, and success; in capacity, and power, 
and scope for usefulness; in love returned, 
and growing with its return, giving and re- 
ceiving more with every year; in deeds of 
wide beneficence which enrich the lives of 
nations. It is good to be blest so ; but not so 
good as to be sacrificed, poor and wretched, 
halt and maimed and bruised, heart-broken, 
spiritless, incapable, lost utterly — so sacri- 
ficed for man's redemption. That is to be 
like Christ; it is to hear Him say, "Thou 
drinkest of my cup; with my baptism art 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN 109 

baptized. I make thee one with me, the des- 
tined sharer of my joy." 

It is not too much ; no, it is not too much ; 
but it is more than can be given, save in ut- 
terest abasement. The head on which this 
bliss is poured must be bowed into the dust, 

We cry in our agony, in weakness, failure, 
perplexity of heart, that there is no hope nor 
help. No hand seems to direct the storm, no 
pity listens. "God has forsaken us," we say. 
Do we say so, and not recall the words which 
fell in that great victory on Calvary — fell 
from the Conqueror's lips, "My God, my 
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Black- 
ness of darkness and despair, and sorrow 
blotting out God's hand, and feebleness sink- 
ing without a stay, these are not failure. In 
these characters was written first the charter 
of our deliverance; these are the characters 
in which it is renewed. 




019 971 842 



